Your genuine business niche and profitability

Running a business well within a genuine niche leads to business profitability. Recently, CBS News Money Watch posted a well-written article online about finding a business niche and sticking with it.

My business niche as an accountant/bookkeeper is working primarily with web design companies, advertising agencies, and similar creative companies that have revenue of $ 3,000,000 per year or less. It doesn’t mean I won’t handle the finances of other companies in fields like manufacturing, but it does mean I know the specific challenges facing these type of clients and I can speak their language. Can other bookkeepers or accountants serve my clientele? Yes, they can. It’s not so narrow a niche where I won’t have competition, but it gives me a profitable focus for building my business.

A niche is a way to distinguish your business from the massive competition that exist in urban areas like the greater Los Angeles region or even online.

Here’s another example of a niche. There’s a manufacturing company in the U.S. that builds firefighting equipment to export to developing countries where the roads and villages can only accommodate small firefighting trucks.

The article points out that enduring small businesses serving niches are often “highly-specialized manufacturers feeding larger industries, companies serving narrow markets, or tech companies doing things that are difficult or impossible to duplicate. Great wealth has been built this way, and if your goal is to have a healthy, enduring small business, you’ll probably find your best opportunities in the niches.”

And lastly, my husband is launching a company in Los Angeles that provides high quality display cases for museums. He’ll distribute the cases which are manufactured in Germany.

Consider your business model. Do you have a niche or can you easily create one in order to define your business and what you offer to customers?

For the complete story by Michael Hess on CBS Money Watch click here. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505143_162-57325050/the-biggest-small-business-rule-i-wish-id-followed/?tag=nl.e857